@yearnalisms requested to bring this beautiful text post by @honeyybrii to gif form! all inspo credit to op of the text post! 💜 this tag is especially a good sum up of the set:
#it's genuinely so funny everytime ilya tries to teeheehaha around an insecurity #shane is like actually 🤓👆🏻
Look at his face! His eyes. He is trying so so so hard to be so chill. So nonchalant. "Don't look down. Turn the volume down. Don't look at him yet. He might disappear. Be cool. Don't spook him." And oh my god he is not chill in the slightest. He is so touched that Shane seems to care. He asked about the girls thing and it didn't go well so he's taking this as a sign that maybe Shane does care. It goes downhill in like 5 minutes but you know.
And then:
He settles in a bit and he looks almost almost relaxed. But he still can't look! And the barely-there jaw flex, shoving down the emotions. Looking makes it too real. Even though it's already very real for Ilya.
And then we get so brave because he wants to look! Memorize Shane laying on his chest. The weight of him. His smell. How his hair feels.
I’m sick of “opt-out” toggles for automatically enabled generative AI features. It’s past time to make “opt in” the default setting for sens
In early July, Meta rolled out a new feature where anyone using its AI app could tag public Instagram accounts and generate images using their likenesses. Meta’s decision to turn the feature on by default, so that Instagram users had to actively opt out, was controversial.
Multiple Instagram creators posted viral videos explaining how to opt out and expressed frustration. After three days of outcry, Meta said in a statement that “this feature missed the mark” and rolled back Instagram tagging for its AI chatbot.
“They should have given you the option to opt in rather than opt out. But I am really getting tired of these companies pushing this AI stuff on us when we don’t want to use it,” said creator Sam Sooin Yang in an Instagram video with over 3 million views. As public sentiment has continued to sour on generative AI, Silicon Valley companies have leaned into enabling these features and related settings by default.
The public reaction to Instagram’s “opt-out” default for that AI feature was notable for its swiftness. “That was a clear and immediate pushback,” says Thorin Klosowski, a senior security and privacy activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Honestly, it was great to see how quickly that happened.” Three days from lights on to lights off for a generative AI feature has to be some kind of record.
Recently, I turned off the “Ask Gemini” bar in my Google Docs. It popped up at the bottom of my documents one morning and prompted me to use Google's chatbot as part of my regular writing workflow. Immediately, I started digging in the settings to disengage this feature. It's a ritual I’ve also performed an unfortunate number of times in recent years on other platforms, like Dropbox and LinkedIn.
Even beyond this feature, Meta is deeply entrenched in the privacy toggle game. “This type of behavior is not unique for Meta,” says Ben Winters, director of AI and privacy at the Consumer Federation of America. “They are stewards of the opt-out status quo that we find ourselves in, without adequate privacy regulation in the States.” Another Meta setting you might want to opt out of is Facebook’s “Enhanced Browsing” roundup that tracks in-app visited websites on mobile.
“We've built a wide array of settings and controls to help people make the privacy choices that are right for them and shape their experiences across our platforms,” Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts wrote in an emailed statement to WIRED. “We also conduct and fund extensive research to develop controls and data practices that are easy for people to use and understand, including through cross-industry organizations like TTC Labs."
It really matters when companies decide to opt users into a new AI tool or data training. “People tend to stick with whatever the default option is,” says Woodrow Hartzog, a professor at Boston University’s law school. “So, if the default option is that you're enrolled, you're probably going to stay enrolled.”
Hartzog points to Article 25 of the European Union’s privacy law, called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), as an example of better protections for users. “The idea is that you have to build your systems to collect only what you need and nothing more,” he says. “And, if one of the options is more privacy protective than the other one, then by default, the more privacy protective option needs to be pre-selected.”
While some privacy experts have taken issue with how the GDPR works in practice, I find the idea of a more privacy-preserving approach as the default powerful. That would give me better peace of mind about my online interactions. No need to feel personally responsible for digging through esoteric menu screens, solving three limericks before I better protect my data.
Most players don't really like All Stars all that much, like, it's an honour being chosen but the novelty wears off after a couple of years and most guys would prefer to have the time off.
The Hollander-Rozanovs, however, fucking live for All Star weekend. It's the only chance they get to play against each other in a competitive setting after they join the same team (scrimmages during practice don't count, especially since neither one of them wants to receive yet another lecture from coach on not treating them like the Stanley Cup finals at risk of injury and lowered team morale).
Luckily, the fans and the league are almost as excited to relive the days of the rivalry so they're hardly ever on the same team for All Stars and trust that Shane and Ilya have like 10-15 different bets riding on that weekend. They're betting on the skills competition, on number of goals, number of points, faceoff percentage, corsi for percentage. They're building it up for weeks. They have arguments from months back that will finally be settled by the results of this game.
Imagine how difficult of an adjustment it will be for Shane and Ilya to not only be on the same team but to never actually share the ice (except on the power play). They're stuck watching their man be far and away the best player out there without the distraction of being mid-play themselves and they've lost their outlet for channelling all of their sexual tension into something reasonably acceptable for audiences. Imagine the fan edits of them just sitting on the bench, chewing on their mouthguard, while shooting obvious fuck-me-eyes at the other. Ilya's urge to check Shane into the boards is unreasonable. As soon as Shane gets on the ice he shoots off like a bat out of hell to burn off his excess energy. They can't even fucking look at each other in the locker room. As soon as they're home Ilya is throwing Shane up against the wall as hard as he would have done if they were both wearing pads. Those first few months they both acquire more bruises off the ice than on it.
Ilya’s entire life is transactional, and it has been since his mother died. His every action centers around repaying debts and exchanging favours.
After her death, his father kept him playing hockey with the expectation that he would bring fame and fortune to the family and repay the “debt” he accrued for the horrendous crime of being a person, specifically a child, with needs and wants.
His every interaction with his brother revolves around money, with him constantly paying for their father’s care.
His career with Boston and his entire life in North America hinges on his ability to perform, his ability to repay his debt for his visa, and his escape, and his very existence.
Even his relationship with Shane is transactional in the beginning, with it truly being just a plan to fuck. They are each providing a service to the other, giving pleasure with the expectation that they will receive it in turn.
His only relationship not of this nature is that with Svetlana, but that existed since long before his mother’s death, so he has no reason to believe that he will ever have another person who will love him without expecting something in return.
This, I think, contributes to why Ilya gets so scared in Tampa, because Shane is saying he no longer wants a transactional relationship, but a mutually supportive one. He no longer wants their arrangement to be one of simply giving and receiving in equal amounts, but one of unconditional support without the idea of constantly managing a social debt.
This is a swift departure from everything he knows and has constructed his life around.
It is like ripping the balancing pole out of a tightrope walker’s hands when they don’t know they are no longer on the rope.
This has to be absolutely terrifying for Ilya, because now, if Shane walks away, it’s not because Ilya’s service was not good enough, it’s because Ilya was not good enough.
This is Shane asking Ilya to form a relationship not based on service but on emotion. Asking him to put down every shield of money, sex, and performance that have for so long been his only way to connect to people while staying safe.
At this point, it has been so long that Ilya can barely remember how to start a relationship where he has nothing to offer but himself, and what if he does offer himself and its not enough, what then?
The he will just have to go back to the life he has always known, now with the knowledge that all along it truly was just his money, his body, his allure, that kept people coming back, not him, never him.
And as terrifying a truth as that would be to face, it might be even scarier to know that he alone is enough, and people chose to use him anyway.
Either way, whether he is worth it or not, it will not change the fact that he has spent his entire life being a tool in other people’s lives, but never a person, never Ilya.
the whole boston team knowing about montreal jane and they think that ilya rozanov who can pull any girl he wants must have found a real baddie the way he keeps coming back for more and then hard cut to shane hollander on a friday night drinking tea and reading the same hockey book for the fourth time who when ilya texts him asking what are you wearing? texts back my new organic cotton pj set and ilya texts back i'm so hard tell me more
Sometimes when Ilya is having a not so great day he sends Shane a dick pic because he knows it will give him a boost of serotonin to see those three dots bounce for an obnoxious amount of time only to get some fuckass response like "Ok" or "You can't send me that without warning" and then Ilya will say "You like?" and Shane will say "Yeah." WITHOUT FAIL. It's their little fucked up version of a kiss on the cheek.
titsay
pixelskylines
andulkaphoto
vaporwave
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
blakekathryn
